The Interior Department is heating up its war on costly and deadly wildfires in the West, junking policies of leaving forests alone and letting piles of dead wood lay to fuel more fires.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said letting nature take its course is costing too much in money and lives, and added that few other countries follow that policy.

Just letting fuel build up, he said, is “inexcusable and shameful because we can actively manage our holdings to remove the dead and dying timber and restore the health of the forest. Other countries do it. Germany does it.”

In an interview with Secrets in advance of issuing a new directive demanding a policy change, he said in the past, “their thinking was let nature take its course. It’s the naturalist in extreme.” Zinke added, “Nature is on geologic time.”

In a memo to department officials last week, Zinke said: “I am directing you to think about fire in a new and aggressive way. Address the threat of fire in all of your activities, rather than engaging only the fire staff. All land managers across the Department of the Interior (Department) have a responsibility, using the full range of existing authorities, to consider using fuels management to achieve their programs’ and units’ resource- and land-management objectives. Where dead and dying trees have become hazards that can carry fire across our boundaries or into areas that are a threat to values-at-risk, we must move aggressively to minimize that threat.”